toward her, pulling the lace cup away from one breast to tease the flesh beneath with his lips. His tongue. His teeth. Jessa shuddered in response. Tariq slanted a look at her. “You will.”
And when she did, he went with her.
It took a long time for Jessa to return to earth, and when she did, he was still stretched out over her, still pressing her into the floor. She was afraid to think too much about what had just happened. She was afraid to allow herself to face it. She wasn’t certain she would like what she might find.
That much pleasure could only be trouble. She could not assign it too much meaning, decide it was something it could never be. She could not allow herself to forget that this was her idea. That she was here to take some of this pleasure for herself and hoard it. This was her longoverdue goodbye, that was all. She didn’t know why she felt so fragile, so vulnerable.
Tariq stirred and rolled off her, sitting up as he yanked his trousers back into place. As he fastened them, Jessa struggled to sit up herself. Was this it, then? She hadn’t thought much beyond the actual pleasure part of the one night of pleasure idea. How was one expected to negotiate such moments? The last time she had been with him, she had been openly and happily in love with him. There had been no awkwardness. Jessa pulled her bra back into position, and swallowed when her eyes fell on the torn scraps of what used to be her panties. She looked down and saw, with some amazement, that she still wore her impractical shoes.
Beside her, Tariq rose to his feet in a single, lithe movement that reminded her that he was a warrior now, in ways she could only pretend to understand. He turned and looked down at her, his expression unreadable.
Jessa was suddenly painfully aware of her surroundings, the majestic grandeur of the well-appointed room, from its carved moldings to the graceful furniture that looked more like works of art than places to sit or to store belongings. It was not even the bedroom, merely the first in what she could see now was a series of rooms. A suite, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows that showed off the lights of Paris shooting off in all directions. Tariq stood before her, half-naked, his thick hair tangled and hanging around his face, making him look untamed and remote but no less regal. He belonged in such a place, surrounded by such things. And here she was, half-naked on a priceless rug, Jessa Heath from Fulford with nothing to show for herself, not even her panties.
It occurred to her that he had only said he wanted to get her out of his system. He had never elaborated what might happen when he had.
The moment stretched between them, long past awkward. Jessa could still feel him between her legs, and yet it was as if a perfect stranger stood before her, carved from stone. Some avenging angel prepared to hand down judgment.
But she had been through worse, she reminded herself, and no matter what happened, no matter how unpleasant the moment, she had chosen this. That was the key point. She had chosen this.
Jessa sat up straighter and pushed her hair back from her face. It hardly mattered if she looked disheveled at this point, after all. He must have had his mouth or his hands on every inch of her body. And what could he possibly do or say to her? Would he leave her cruelly, perhaps? She had already survived that once, relatively unscathed. She met his gaze proudly.
“Thank you,” she said in her most polite tone. It was the one she used in fancy restaurants and to bank managers. “That was exactly what I wanted.”
“I am delighted to hear it.” His tone was sardonic. “I live to serve.” Now he openly mocked her. She pretended she could not hear the edge in his voice.
“Yes, well.” She got to her feet with rather less grace than he had displayed, and looked around for her dress. She saw it in a crumpled heap a few feet away. “If only that were true. You would be a different man, wouldn’t you?” She moved toward the dress.
“Jessa.” Her name was another command, and she looked at him even though she knew she should ignore him, pick up her things and walk out. “What are you doing?”
“My dress…” She gestured at it but couldn’t seem to turn away from him, not when he was looking at her that way, so brooding and dark and something else, something she might have called possessive on another man.
“You won’t need it.”
“I won’t?”
He didn’t move, he only watched her, but his eyes were hot. Jessa was shocked to feel her body respond to him. Anew. Again. Her nipples hardened, her sex pulsed.
It was absurd. She had gotten what she’d wanted, hadn’t she? What was the point of drawing it out? No matter how ravenous she seemed to be for him.
“We are not done here,” he said quietly. His gaze was hard, yet she softened. “We have hardly begun.”
CHAPTER NINE
TARIQ stood at the window that rose high above the bedroom, looking out over the city. Dawn snuck in with long pink fingers, teasing the famous rooftops of Paris before him, yet he barely saw it. Behind him, Jessa slept in the great bed that stood in the center of the ornate room, the heavy white-and-gold-brocade coverlet long since discarded, her naked limbs curled beneath her, rose and pink from the exertions of the long night. He did not need to confirm this with his own eyes again; he would hear it if her breathing altered, if she turned over, if she awoke.
It was as if he could feel her body as an extension of his own. Perhaps this was inevitable after such a night, he told himself, but he knew better. He had lived a life of excess for more years than he cared to recall, and he had had many nights that would qualify as extreme, and yet he had never felt this kind of connection to a woman. He didn’t care for it. It reminded him of all the things he had worked so hard to forget.
“You make me feel alive,” he had told her once, years ago, recklessly, and she had laughed as she rose above him, naked and beautiful, her face open and filled with light.
“You are alive,” she had whispered in his ear, holding him close. She had then proceeded to prove it to them both.
Tariq had lost count of the times he had reached for her last night, or her for him. He knew he had slept but little, far more interested in tasting her, teasing her, sinking into her one more time. He had reacquainted himself with every nook and cranny of her body, all of its changes, all of its secrets—the pleasure so intense, so astounding, that he could not bring himself to let it end.
Because he knew that once he stopped, he would have to face the truths he was even now avoiding. And as the night wore on, Tariq had found himself less and less interested in doing so.
“This is a feast,” Jessa had said at some point, while they sat in the sitting room and ate some of the rich food they’d ignored earlier, wearing very little in the way of clothes. She had smiled at him, unselfconscious and at ease with her legs folded beneath her and her hair tumbled down around her bare shoulders. She had looked free. Just as she had always been with him.
“Indeed it is,” he had replied, but he had not been talking about the meal.
Memories chased through him now, hurtling him back to a time he wanted to forget—had worked to forget, in fact, for years. Touching her, tasting her, breathing in her scent. These things had unlocked something in him that he had worked hard to keep hidden, even from himself.
His parents had died in a car accident when he was too young to remember more than fleeting images of his
